Wenger's doughnut KM model

Earlier this year Etienne Wenger published:

"Knowledge management as a doughnut: Shaping your knowledge strategy through communities of practice"

An interesting article that sets forth the relationship between communities of practice and KM strategy. Etienne argues that domains, communities and practices provide the key structures to support learning, sharing and stewarding knowledge.

When individuals come together around a passion, they tell stories, surface heuristics, share experience & insights, craft solutions, learn from each-other and define their domain, i.e., these communities self-manage their knowledge. This is the key that links strategy to performance.

Wenger talks of 3 essential structural components:

* Sponsorship

Allows CoPs to thrive without formal reporting requirements. Sponsorship is necessary at both executive and direct management levels to sanction time allocation and promote cultural acceptance.

* Recognition

Peer and organization recognition to allow identity development and build reputations beyond teams and task groups.

* Support

Meeting places, travel funds, technology infrastructure and explicit roles. Organizations that have small CoP leadership teams to provide guidance, logistics and process advice, have been more successful in cultivating CoPs.

What I found missing here is the community level practices to grow knowledge - think patterns, ontologies, distinctions, concept mapping, collaborative writing, knowledge mapping and beyond

Any suggestions or further thoughts?

Comments

[panasianbiz]

I stumbled upon this site while I was in the process of doing some online research. What a fascinating discussion this turned out to be! As a writer, an educator, and an avid blogger, this gave me a lot of food for thought.

[DeanG]

Thanks for the summary. When I think about tools, I think of the items you
mention missing. The
'essential structural components' are the portions I need to consider when determining if a grassroots effort can take off or not..

Can a tool's existance create a CoP? Perhaps, but without the essential structural components, will it thrive?

Sponsorship seems to be primarily a momentum factor.

[Michael Jones]

http://www.yafle.com/archives/2004/11/mmmdoughnuts/

I wrote up a bit on this a while back. I don't really see the cyclical connection in the doughnut analogy, but agree with his conceptualization of the function of management in self-organizing learning systems.

I'd disagree with David's comment above. Yes, COPs exist and can work without explicit sponsorship or even in the face of management opposition. But clearly things work better if management acknowledges, supports and defends the activities of its COPs. The more time practicioners spend fighting bureaucracy and executive ignorance or hostility, the less expertise they will build.

[Nancy]

Denham, I'm getting a blank page with that link.

May just be line problems it takes some time to download pdf

[David Locke]

Sponsorship is standard change management. As long as COPs represent a change, ok, get an exec. But, if you are managing your executive and managerial focus, then you have to ask the questions is the COP in offer and strategic, because if it isn't then, no, you don't get an executive sponsor.

If you need an executive to change, then frankly, you can't change.

COPs happen regardless of sponsorship or not. They might even happen better inspite of sponsorship. This because of the standard fad practice of silo busting is contrary to COPs, communities, domain based cultures, and domain semantics.